


The Uninvited Guest

by bushViperCutie



Series: October Prompts 2020 [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Child Neglect, Fear, Ghouls, Haunted Houses, Neglect, One Shot, POV Severus Snape, Self Prompt, Spooky, Young Severus Snape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-03
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:22:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26784361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bushViperCutie/pseuds/bushViperCutie
Summary: 9yr old Severus Snape investigates the mysterious noises he hears one night.(Day 1)
Relationships: Eileen Prince & Severus Snape, Severus Snape & Tobias Snape
Series: October Prompts 2020 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1953055
Comments: 2
Kudos: 18





	The Uninvited Guest

**Author's Note:**

> Day one of my own October prompts :D I’ll be doing some of my own prompts and some from the snapetober list! HAPPY SPOOKTOBER >:D
> 
>  **Day 1 prompt:** Haunted House + Ghoul (slimy buck-toothed ogre-like creature which inhabits attics and barns; has low intelligence and feeds on bugs and household pests.)

#  **~~~ * ~~~ * ~~~ * ~~~ * ~~~**

The stormy day outside battered Severus’ window, banging on the smudged glass panel begging to be let in. Raindrops fell like streams, falling to the earth with a splatter in the leaf-covered mud below. He pressed his nose to the window, feeling the frost bite at his warm skin. He could see a puddle forming, and then growing larger, large enough to swallow up the house whole.

_Good. Let it eat up the house and everyone in it._

He laid down in the middle of his room, on the creaky, dusty floorboards and closed his eyes, picturing the house sinking deeper and deeper into the ground. He’d lay there as the mud oozed out of every gap in the wood and crack in the walls. It’d come up under him and for a second, after the feeling of cold wetness pulling on his clothes, he’d feel like he was floating – ascending – and then the mud would overtake him, dragging him down into a world far better than his own.

_CRE…AK._

Severus’ eyes flung open and scanned the web-ridden ceiling. He lifted his head, sliding his elbows under his shoulder for support and stared up, examining the chipped white paint. He spotted several spiders, scuttling to their respective corners but nothing else seemed out of place. It was as it always was, unkept and looking decades old despite being built not long after he was born.

His stomach growled and he sat up, pressing his fists into himself. The growl, if followed by pain, told him one thing; it was finally dinner time. He pushed himself off the ground and put his ear to the door. He heard snoring and the faint clanking of spoon to pot to plate. His mother had cooked something.

He turned the knob and pulled open the door, letting it creak loudly to announce he was leaving his room. Sometimes he imagined he was being announced to a court of kings and queens and dancing royals at a ball in a faraway castle, but nothing could be farthest from the truth. The creaking was not a warning, it was a question. If he didn’t hear the angry footfall of his father coming up the stairs, then he was being granted permission to come down and eat with them. On most days it didn’t matter around dinner time, though he always let the door ask for him, just to be sure.

Severus placed his hand on the railing and let it slide down with him, watching it jump as it neared the protruding nail, touching back down just after the splintery rough patch near the bottom. The house had been built a month after he was born, which made it nine years old, like himself, although the caved in second step, the peeling wall paper, and the faint smell of mold would lead you to believe otherwise. The house was as deceptively cunning as he was.

He paused at the entrance of his living room, peering inside to see his father, large and half-hidden in shadow, sunken into his chair with his head dropped back as he snored, open mouth. A newspaper rested on his chest and his radio, tuned to his favorite channel, sat on the side table beside several empty glass bottles.

In the kitchen, his mother placed three bowls on the small round table and a stack of napkins in the center. His place was in the middle and so he pulled out the seat and sat, watching as she dug out two clean spoons and handed one to him. Her half-lidded eyes looked annoyed at the sight of him, but she fed him nonetheless.

“Stew,” she muttered under her breath as she placed the empty pot in the sink to soak in water. She licked the ladle clean and dropped it in as well.

Severus looked down at the brown, creamy liquid and nodded. That was normally the extent of conversations with his mother. Friendly conversations, that is. He dipped his spoon in and felt something solid. He sat up, excited to pull it out and see that it was meat, soggy and light in color.

“Chicken stew.” His mother sat with a grunt and began eating, taking in the stew like a well-oiled factory machine, slow but consistent. She was done with her bowl before Severus was half-way through his and picked up the third now cold bowl and dug around for chicken chunks, setting it back down after she was done thieving.

Severus watched her get up from the table, leaving her bowl and spoon in the sink, and reach for the cigarette box atop the fridge. She kept it out of reach of him, less-so because of any motherly instincts to keep him healthy and more because it cost half their income to keep up her habit along with his father’s. She left out their kitchen door – held up poorly by one hinge instead of two, which wasn’t troubling in the least when it came to locking since there was nothing valuable in this house or the next – and sat on the brick half-wall, her head just visible from the kitchen window.

He heard his father’s chair groan from the living room and hurried his eating. He threw the stew – and especially the chicken pieces – into his mouth as fast as he could until a large blistered hand pulled the bowl out from under him.

“Go ter your room,” his father rasped. He poured out the remainder of Severus’ stew into his own bowl and began slurping it into his mouth.

Severus stood and pushed in his chair, staring at the stew longingly for a few last seconds before making his way back upstairs. He closed the door and glared, wishing he could pierce the wood and walls and floor to reach his father.

There wasn’t much else to do with his day beside stare out his window again. After several hours of tracing an outline of the house across the street on the foggy glass, he got ready for bed and laid down for the night without brushing his teeth. He pulled his sheets up to his chin and lifted his head to brush all his hair out from under him. He hated waking to a rat’s nest in the back of his head.

~ * ~ * ~

_CREA…K._

Severus sat up quickly and looked around. He reached for his beside lamp and rubbed his eyes, looking around. His room was exactly the same as he’d left it; a pile of books on the corner by the window, a set of paper and pens peeking out from under his dresser, and his shoes – the ones he wasn’t allowed to wear unless he was going out in public – were discarded by the door.

He slid up to sit with his head resting against the headboard of his bed and looked down. He slid his hands over his sheets and rubbed his fingers together, feeling a strange texture to them. Dust. He was sure of it. Nearly every surface of his house was covered in it, all but the railing he touched every day.

_C…REAK._

“The ceiling,” he whispered. He got up on his bed, balancing well despite the lumpiness of the mattress, and reached up. His fingers grazed the ceiling when he stood on his toes, not enough to knock.

_CREAK._

Dust fell on his face, forcing his eyes shut. _An animal got in!_ He wiped his face and smiled. He’d never been so close to an animal before. He saw a stray hound across the street once, but asking to keep it was something he’d never even dream of doing. He’d never wish his home life on an any pet.

Severus stepped down and walked around his room carrying his lamp as far as the cord would let it. There wasn’t ever much light in his room, even on the sunniest days because of the way his window faced, and so he never noticed anything off with the ceiling; but that outline of the house across the street had a pointed roof, and the top floor of their house had a flat ceiling, meaning there was at least some amount of missing space not accounted for.

He aimed the light just above the door and smiled, seeing the thin outline of a square, practically invisible among all the cracks and stains. He set the lamp down on the floor and opened his door fast, trying to minimize the creaking.

His parent’s room door was shut and there wasn’t any light seeping out. Asleep. He tiptoed down the stairs and walked into the kitchen. The only chairs in the house were the ones that had come with the kitchen table and although they didn’t seem sturdy, he knew they were. There was a hole in the far wall where his father had thrown one of them during one of his fits. The chair had simply bounced off and clattered to the floor, not a splinter or chip to be found on it.

He slid one out and hoisted it up, eager to get it up the stairs. The steps creaked a little louder, but that was normally never a problem. When he was far too asleep to care, he always stomped up and down the steps at night to get to the toilet outside and he never got yelled at for it. He made sure not to thump or bang around with it and set it by the lamp, closing the door just in case his parents did wake.

_CR…EAK. CREAK._

He pulled the chair right under the square and stepped up, pushing the piece of ceiling with his palms. It budged with minimal effort and slid off easily. He wondered if his mother knew about it, or if the attic – if it was one – already contained boxes of stuff. He didn’t see how they could own anything other than what they had already, since the house was barely filled with anything at all.

He looked up into the darkness and swallowed a lump in his throat. The darkness was unlike the darkness of his room. His room had four walls with different shades of dark and darker greys, where minimal light from his dim lamp reached, and yet he could see the end and he could see where dark met darker. This darkness, however, looked endless. It was black and full of unknowns. He hadn’t studied this darkness for nine years, he didn’t know what this darkness would feel like or smell like or if it would ever turn into any shade of grey.

He looked down at his lamp and then around for anything else. _The mirror._ Severus jumped down and winced as pain shot up from his ankle. He sighed and tried his best to keep weight off of it as he traveled back down stairs for the long mirror in the foyer and back up. He angled the mirror and lamp so that light would enter the square hole and stacked all his books on the chair.

He climbed the wobbly stack and gripped the edges of the hole tight. He poked his head through and looked around. There were bits of light shining through his hair hitting a trunk a few feet away. The roof was not high enough that he could stand and had to remain hunched over as he crawled through the hole.

He rolled onto his back and sat up, sliding down to the trunk. It was pushed up against a wall and despite the locks coming undone, refused to open.

_CREA – THUMP._

Severus whirled around and stared into the darkness. The animal was nowhere in sight. He’d imagined it to be a stray cat, but he couldn’t spot any shining eyes looking back at him. He held his breath, hearing his heart beating faster than it ever had.

_THUMP… THUMP. KNOCK._

“Who’s there!” Severus back up onto the trunk and hugged his knees in tight. The noise didn’t sound like an animal anymore, not even a large one. It sounded intentional. Something was there in the darkness with him, on the other side of the hole. Was it looking at him? Was it a threat?

_KNOCKKNOCKKNOCK – THUMP._

Think! Think! His parent’s room was right under him, it must be. He’d climbed in through the hole facing his bedroom door. He pushed the trunk aside, keeping his back to the wall, and started banging on the floor. “Help! Help! Mam! Da! Help me!”

_CREAK. CREAK. KNOCK. KNOCKKNOCKKNOCK._

It was getting closer. The thing was coming towards him. _Why was it making so much noise!_ He’d realized too late that their house was haunted. Severus started sobbing between cries for help and the banging on the floor. “Da! Da!” He couldn’t hear anything but his heart beating in his ears. He kept whipping his head up as if the creature’s face would appear right in front of him at any moment. He started crying harder as what little light there was vanished and the darkness enveloped him, eating him whole. Suddenly he could feel the emptiness running coldly against every bit of his exposed skin. “Don’t hurt me!” he screamed louder than he’d ever screamed before, cutting up his throat with his desperate cry, fearing the worst was near.

“Severus! Where the fuck’ve you gone!” his father roared.

There was a distant clatter and suddenly the smell of alcohol behind heavy breaths pushed through his clouded senses. Large hands wrapped around his fists and yanked him forward, pulling him down and out through the hole. His father caught him as he fell out and dropped him on the floor by his pile of books.

His eyes were bloodshot and furious. He was seething with anger and his whole body trembled. Severus backed away, knowing he’d done the unthinkable. He’d woken his father on a weekday. Severus quickly stood and choked back sobs.

Severus pointed up at the hole. “Th-there’s somethin’ – ” he sobbed, “somethin’ there…”

His father didn’t move. He didn’t even look back into the hole. He gripped the back of the chair and dragged it out with him. Severus watched him throw the chair down the stairs and heard it shatter to pieces. His mother – who had been standing by the dresser the whole time – didn’t even twitch at the sound. She looked at him, half-lidded and bored in her night gown. He sat on his bed and stared at her until she left without a word, closing the door behind her.

His lamp was still on the floor and Severus was too scared to bring it closer or move away from his bed. He pulled his legs up and crawled under the sheets, bringing them up to his nose. He didn’t know what was there, but he knew it had meant to be loud. It had meant to thump around and knock. The creaking he’d heard all night was just the monster getting comfortable.

He looked up at the hole and wiped his eyes, clearing his vision as best he could. The piece of ceiling hadn’t been put back and it felt like the darkness was seeping out and at any moment the monstrous creature would climb down and attack him.

The lamp tipped, as if pushed by an invisible force, and fell back in place suddenly. Severus held his breath, quivering with fright. Light reflected off the mirror again and shined through the hole, illuminating the nothing that it was. He let out a shaky breath. _At least it’s not watching me._

For hours he kept his eyes on the hole, willing whatever was up there to stay put and not come any closer. His eyelids grew heavy and his blinks were becoming faster and faster until his eyelids fluttered closed. He’d taken his first deep breath when he felt it. Eyes on him.

He slowly opened his eyes and saw two yellow ones staring down at him. “MAM! DA!” Severus screamed.

The slimy creature opened his mouth, grinning and banged. _THUMP. THUMP. THUMP._ It’s large buck-teeth reflected sickly yellow. It reached one long arm out of the hole and grabbed a spider, popping it in its mouth, crunching down hard. It smiled again, showing his rodent teeth, and banged again. _KNOCKKNOCKKNOCK._

Tears ran down his cheeks again. “Go away! Leave me alone!” It was teasing him. Showing him just how well it would feast on his skin and bones with his teeth. Severus closed his eyes and pulled the sheets over his head, hoping for a quick end.

The door creaked open and shut quickly. Severus poked his head out, relieved to see his mother rushing in with a chair. She pushed the beast back with the legs and then set it down, climbing on it and through the hole, disappearing into the darkness.

Severus stared at the hole, listening in for his mother. He heard something unclasp and then a sudden _POP._ He crawled to the edge of his bed, feeling surprisingly worried. Within seconds she was climbing back down and slid the ceiling square back in place. She looked at him piercingly, her eyes no longer half-lidded. He shuddered at the intensity of her gaze.

She came closer and turned the chair around to sit facing him. “Severus. That was a ghoul.”

He frowned. “A ‘ghoul’? Our house is haunted then.”

She looked at the closed door and shook her head. “We’ve got some things t’talk ‘bout.”

#  **~~~ * ~~~ * ~~~ * ~~~ * ~~~**


End file.
